In Lenten season, liturgy emphasises the importance of changing one's life, without going for signs.
One 'sign': that of the Crucified One, of Jesus who died and rose again for all.
By derivation, an eloquent sign becomes an existence converted to the praise of God.
According to St Bonaventure, Francis is symbolised in the figure of the second angel [the first is Christ] who ascends from the east (cf. Rev 7:2) and bears within him the seal of the living God.
This is confirmed by his mission to call men to penance and mark the elect with the sign of the Tau*, and above all by his being himself transformed, even in body, into the Crucified Christ.
«This generation [...] seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah» (Lk 11:29)
The Sources attest:
"This herald of God, worthy to be loved by Christ [...] is the servant of God Francis [...] an example of perfection for the followers of Christ.
We are moved to embrace, with faith and piety, this conviction by the fact that he had the mission from heaven to call men to weep, to mourn, to shave their heads and to gird their loins, and to impress, with the sign of the penitential cross and with a habit made in the shape of a cross, the Tau on the foreheads of those who weep and mourn.
But he confirms in it, with its incontestable truth, the testimony of that seal that made him like the living God, that is, like Christ Crucified. A seal that was imprinted in his body not by the work of nature or the skill of an artificer, but rather by the marvellous power of the Spirit of the living God" (FF 1022).
The Crucifix in Francis: icon of rebirth through a continuous existential exodus. A life marked by the love of God.
* Letter of the Hebrew and Greek alphabet, whose shape recalls the figure of the cross.
* Francis chose it as his seal and signature. Brother Pacifico contemplated it shining on his forehead.
Wednesday 1st wk. in Lent (Lk 11:29-32)